Angel of Mercy
by pen pencil whatever
Summary: the pain and shock hit her hard, in one night she had lost it all her lover and her daughter, now she has promised to bring death to a mad man.
1. a dead angel

If you are not familiar with Cowboy bebop, don't worry you don't have to know the show to understand this story. But for you to better understand it I'll tell you that he is a bounty hunter in a time of space ships and many different settlements but no aliens... I probably just confused you more.   
  
This is just the beginning so please read the rest over the time I put it in.  
  
I claim no ownership of cowboy bebop and all of the rest of the stuff is mine so don't use it!  
Don't sue I have nothing of interest, I wish I did, but I don't.  
  
Best Served Cold... Sometimes By: Soft Rose Clothes  
Ch1: a dead angel  
  
A soft pink rose petal drifted to the tabletop. The drooping rose had given its last garment. No longer pink it retained its lethal thorns, yet it was bare... bare, like she was bare, of everything except for the tiny string of her will, the only thing that kept her from letting go... letting go of life.   
  
"Jet are you sure this is the place?" Spike raised and eyebrow at the room filled with dead and dying roses. Jet stepped around him into the room, "yeah this is the place, all of my sources are stable this has to be it" Spike picked up a bare rose stem, "your sources may be stable but they aren't recent. It looks like Kristen Burns hi tailed it out of here a few weeks ago." Spike put the stem back down into its holder and another stem pricked his finger. Spike raised his finger to his lips and sucked on the spot where a drop of blood had formed. Jet was already looking through the apartment, "Hey, guess since we're here we should go ahead and search the apartment." Spike shrugged and went into the bathroom to search through the cabinets. He threw everything over his shoulder that didn't look useful. Spike found a jar of strange pills and turned to yell at Jet, "Hey, Jet..." Spike couldn't finish his sentence for that's when he saw... her.  
  
She lay in the bath an old bath the type with clawed feet. She was the color of snow; her skin looked dead against the pale porcelain of the tub. Clad in a black suit enhanced the effect... a dead angel... her hair was plastered to her head down to her shoulders, then it spread out in a silky brown curtain, over the water, turned pink from her blood. She looked asleep her eyes closed with thick lashes that the mascara had smudged making her look as if she had been crying, and her lips where still a deep red from her lipstick. Spike fell hard to the toilet seat and about fainted when the angel's eye's snapped open and stared.  
  
  
"You feeling any better?" Spike stood aloft a few feet from the end of her bed. She sighed refusing to open her eyes. "I know you're awake" Spike stepped closer, keeping his hands in his pockets. "Go away." She finally spoke. "No... Kristen Burns." She allowed her eyes to open; "I'm not" He sat down a few inches away in a chair placed next to her bed. "Then tell me, who are you?" She sighed loudly and sunk into the sheets sapped of the energy and will to lie. "I'm Cherry." Spike chuckled. Cherry's eyes narrowed, "It's the truth, my mother was addicted to the things when she was pregnant with me, so she named me Cherry." Spike nodded giving no sign that he believed her. Cherry sighed in exasperation. "So... how did you end up floating in Kristen's bath half dead?" Cherry took in a breath and began her story for the second time.  
  
"I went to Kristen's apartment, I was after the same bounty as you. I thought I had covered my tracks so that I could surprise her, only somehow she knew and was ready for me. When I got to her place she shot me with her own poisonous mixture, that she creates herself with her Rose garden. The poison paralyzed me. So she put me in her bath and filled the tub with water. The water slowed down the poison so that I would feel more pain. Kristen seems to have the same tendency as her boyfriend they both love to torture their victims." Cherry's eyes took on a glassy look, but she quickly shook it away, "She told me how I would die and how long it would take... and then you came. I think otherwise I would have been dead."  
  
Cherry stared for a moment at the ceiling then looked over at Spike he sighed and took out a cigarette from his pocket bringing along with it his right hand that seemed to be bloated three times it's size. He waved it around, "a remnant of her rose garden" Cherry nodded, "the poison must react differently to your body" Spike got up and walked to the door, "Most things do" he left, and she was alone again.  
  
Alone, she could think, alone she could grieve.  
  
End chapter one. Next chapter: Living a Lie 


	2. life of lies

Read on please, it gets better in this chapter, with some action and some Angst.   
And there is no romance between Cherry and Spike but there is some romance... only not between whom you would think! ^_~  
So enjoy!!  
  
  
Chapter two: Life of lies   
"Hello!" a little red headed girl dropped from the ceiling into Cherry's lap. She rolled to the end of the bed then back to the front all the while with a big smile on her face. She rolled so that her face was an inch away, Cherry scooted away until she almost fell off the back of the small bed, "Umm... excuse me but who are you?" Ed grinned wider "I'm Ed, and that's Ein" the little girl pointed to a tiny dog that stared up at her from the floor and cocked his head at Cherry with a disturbingly intelligent gaze.  
Crossing her arms across her chest protectively, Cherry smiled tentatively at the little Girl.  
"Ed likes Cherry's name, sounds sweet!" Cherry relaxed realizing the girl was just what she seemed.  
"Oh you do, do you! Well I wouldn't know if I taste sweet or not, never crossed my mind to taste myself" Ed suddenly licked her arm, then her face twisted into concentration, "Nope you taste a little salty" Ed sounded a little disappointed then perked up, "Do you have any food?" Cherry shook her head no and was shocked when Ed fell back with all her limbs twitching and let out a long grown that was accompanied by her growling stomach.  
Ed decided she would look somewhere else for food and began to leave the room. "Come on Ein let's go see Spike!" Ed began to run out of the room at high speed. Cherry called behind her, desperately needing something to keep the images out of her head. But Ed didn't seem to hear her still careening down the hall in search for munchies.  
  
  
She wondered down the hall of her beachfront house, shadows playing across the floor from the swaying palms that lined the beach. It was still light out but the house was darkened by the long afternoon shadows and she stumbled over one of her daughter's toys, a pink stuffed kitten. Cherry picked it up and smiled at the evidence of her six year old daughter, she carefully placed it safely onto the couch next to a picture book, that lay open, half read.  
Suddenly a crash sounded from her room that startled Cherry. She spun away from the couch to look into the empty hall, another sound this time more like muffled sobs. Her heart began to pound. She thought that Shelly and Erica must have gone out for lunch when she found the silent house, but someone was here. Cherry walked down the hall towards her bedroom where the noise was coming from. Her first thought was that they must have been home all along and where playing together in her room.  
"Erica, Shelly, I'm home!" Cherry smiled as she entered her room fully expecting to find her lover and daughter playing a game stretched out on her bed. "Eri-" Cherry stopped dead in her tracks and stifled a gasp when she caught sight of the room and her Lover. Tears began to fall from her eyes and her breathing grew rough. Erica lay in the middle of her bed but instead of the light tan sheets that always covered her bed they where Red, soaked in blood the sheet was almost completely covered as though someone had painted it on. Erica lay sprawled across it arms and legs spread out as far apart as they could be and little slices up and down her arms where clearly visible. Cherry threw up on the spot and fell to her knees, sobbing and curling into a ball trying to stop the pain in her middle by squeezing as hard as she could but it didn't work.  
Finally able to stand Cherry stumbled to the phone and typed in the local emergency number. The operator calmly took down her location and tried to calm Cherry down but Cherry couldn't stand the woman's emotionless voice any longer and let the phone dangle from its wire. Careful to avoid looking at the body on the bed she tried to put some reality into her situation at the moment. That's when it hit her and Cherry grabbed her gun from it's hiding place in her underwear drawer, someone had just made that noise and it couldn't possibly be Erica. Slowly she backed up to a wall and scanned the room; she didn't see anyone, even after checking the bathroom. A crash sounded from the kitchen and a high picked squeal, Shelly, Joy and dread singed Cherry's nerves, she was alive.   
Creeping hastily but quietly into the room Cherry leveled the gun in front of her in the direction of the kitchen doors. "Shelly, baby are you okay?" A muffled scream came from Cherry's right, she twirled around gun swinging with her. Cherry was hit in her jaw a hit that made her stumble back against the wall. Shock held her still even as someone wrenched the gun from her grasp and threw it across the linoleum floor. "Hello, you must be mama." The sneering voice scoured Cherry's heart. She looked up to find her daughter bound and gagged kneeling on the floor her arm grasped painfully by a tall hansom man his face twisted in sadistic pleasure "I've been waiting for you."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
TBC  
Coming soon: What's in a name? 


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